There’s a lot of self-love going around these days. I get it. We live in a time when women are expected to have successful careers, make babies, breastfeed in public, be activists, all while eating well, exercising, and looking fabulous at school pick up in a kick-ass pair of four inch shooties. It is easy to get down on ourselves and need a reminder of how amazing we are.
From “Love your body,” to, “Love your mind,” to, “Love the saggy, middle-aged skin you’re in,” there is no shortage of inspirational broo-ha-ha floating around social media today. We have become experts at telling ourselves that no matter what we do, we are awesome, special, and perfect as we are.
I’m calling bullshit.
Can we please just acknowledge that there is stuff we hate about ourselves? “Hey world, I HATE my big-ass nose and I am never going to like it!” Wow. That felt good.
Now I’m on a roll. Here are ten things I hate about me:
- My lips. They are thin. I want big fucking luscious lips like Angelina Jolie instead of tiny little wrinkly worm lips. I want to rock a big fat smear of fuchsia lip-gloss and purse my lips in a duck-face selfie, but I would look like a demented fish.
- I am lazy. Even when I have a goal in mind, a workday can easily become a “me” day, and I can justify the fuck out of it. This really puts a damper on my ambitious side.
- I am competitive. I swear up and down that I am not competitive. But I am an only child. My parents told me that I was special. I believed them. I can be resentful when others have success doing things I want to succeed at. (I know – fuck me).
- My short fuse. I don’t lose my temper often (and I am never violent). But I feel like losing it plenty, and it SUCKS to rein it in. I have no tolerance for bullshit. If you are not helping, get the fuck out of the way. If you didn’t hear me say it the first time, get a fucking hearing aid, I am not saying it again.
- My ass. I am getting older, I gained a lot of weight with pregnancies, lost the weight, and I have droopage. I want a round, firm, stays in the elastic of my panties and fills out a pair of skinny jeans ass.
- I am impatient. People who walk four across on a sidewalk? Fuck you. People who are always late? Fuck off. I have places to go and shit to do, so either get your shit together or get out of my way. (Incidentally, this is why I cannot meditate, and barely tolerate yoga. No. Patience.)
- My hair. It is dry, frizzy, and riddled with grays that insist on standing straight up from the middle of my head like some deranged feather crest on a tropical bird. When it comes to styling my do, seriously…I. Can’t. Even.
- My potty mouth. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t give a flying fuck about this one. See – self-love!
- My voice. I want a gravelly, sexy vixen kind of voice a la Linda Fiorentino. Instead I have a voice that borders on shrill. I make my living speaking to large groups of people. I love public speaking, but I hate my voice. Well ain’t that a bitch.
- My judgmental side. I have opinions about pretty much everything. I can be snobbish about certain things. But hell – I am special, I have worked hard, and I have earned the right to have opinions. Right? RIGHT? (Honorable mention goes to my need to please people)
So let’s acknowledge what we love AND what we hate about ourselves. The sooner we stop deluding ourselves into believing that we are perfect, the sooner we can get on with the business of just BEING who we are, the good, the bad, and the droopy. No validation necessary.
About the author: Jess Kapp is a writer and geologist, living in Tucson, Arizona with her mountain man husband and two precocious sons. She is the associate department head and a lecturer in the department of geosciences at the University of Arizona, where she teaches introductory geology to hundreds of less than impressed students. She writes a blog about everything from women in science to motherhood to her midlife crisis on her website http://jesskapp.com . She is finishing a memoir about her high altitude field adventures in the middle of nowhere, Tibet. You can find her on the Huffington Post, Facebook, and Twitter @jess_kapp.
